The Snow-Woman
by barbara princess of delphi
Summary: Modern AU - Elsa Arensen has a secret. **Up for adoption**


Dr. Kai Lindquist had been Arendelle's town physician for twenty-five years. Over four thousand people from the surrounding countryside counted on him as their trusted confidant. He had delivered babies and watched them grow up. He had held the hands of the dying, and prayed alongside their families through long nights. He had seen it all.

But even Dr. Kai Lindquist's vast experience did not prepare him for the baby girl who now lay on his exam table sneezing actual, honest-to-God snowflakes – snowflakes! – into the air.

The young parents occupying the two chairs in his office this day, Agnar and Iduna Arensen, had been Kai's patients for the last three years. Over the last year, Kai had monitored Iduna's pregnancy – which went as smoothly as he'd ever seen a pregnancy go – and three months ago, he had delivered their baby girl Elsa in this very office.

"Hmm," Kai wondered, as he examined little Elsa on the table. "This started yesterday, you say?"

"Yes, I'd had a cold last week," Agnar said, "it's gone now. But Elsa got fussy yesterday and didn't want to eat, and then she sneezed and it was cold."

"Ah-chie!" Another sneeze from the infant girl – another small cloud of snowflakes dotted Kai's hand and face.

"Well…" Kai hesitated. "I have to admit, I don't know if I've ever heard of anything like this before." Seeing Agnar and Iduna's faces creased with worry, Kai quickly tried to find some reassurance. "Does she seem fine otherwise?" he asked. "How many wet diapers did she have yesterday?"

"I guess everything else has been the same," Iduna said. "I changed her 6, or 7 times yesterday I think. She's eating a little less."

Kai thought about sending the Arensens to see the specialist doctors at Corona Hospital, about 40 miles up the road, but he doubted they would have any more idea what was going on than he did. A baby sneezing actual cold ice – that was unheard of in the history of medicine. The doctors would want to subject little Elsa to endless tests – she'd become a research subject of the whole profession if they ever got their hands on her. Kai decided to spare the little girl, at least until she was older.

"I'll be honest," Kai told the couple, "I really don't know what to make of this, and I highly doubt any doctor would. I can refer you to Corona for testing, but right now I don't think it's worth the hassle." Kai wasn't even sure this was happening at all – perhaps he was dreaming, or had eaten a bad mushroom and was on a trip? He pressed ahead, making his best diagnosis – even though he was far from certain of it. "She probably just has a cold, like the one you had last week – it's just a weird cold. If she doesn't get better, if she stops eating, peeing, or pooping, then bring her back, and we'll think about testing. But I think she'll be okay."

Agnar and Iduna looked considerably relieved, though still a little unsettled by the whole strange situation. Kai sent them out of his office, and prayed he had made the right decision.

Three months later the Arensen family was back in Kai's waiting room. He checked his charts again. Adgar and Iduna were here for their annual physicals. Elsa was due for her six-month visit.

"Hello, hello! Great to see you again. How is she doing?"

"Oh, Dr. Lindquist, thank you so much! You were right, it was just a cold and she got better in a few days. But we've noticed, she's been feeling a little cool recently. Can you make sure everything is alright?"

"Certainly, let me take a look." Iduna set her daughter down on the examination table, and Kai, after washing his hands, leaned down to examine his infant patient.

Elsa did indeed feel cool to the touch. But she was as lively as any six-month-old infant, moving about freely on the table. Kai reached for his thermometer and took Elsa's temperature.

"Strange," Kai observed, "Elsa's definitely got a low temperature. 95 degrees… well, just watch her closely. If she gets sick at all, bring her in right away."

Kai then examined both parents, and sent the whole family home with a clean bill of health.

By one year of age, Elsa's differences were becoming apparent.

"She's getting colder," Agnar said, "and she's been popping snowflakes out of her hand, and there's no place she could be getting them from!"

And indeed when Kai gave Elsa her shots, she screamed in pain and small bursts of snow exploded from her fingers, coating the examination table in a thin layer of snow, which soon melted and were absorbed into the paper.

Kai still had no explanation for these anomalous snowflakes that came from Elsa. But she was growing well, and seemed healthy, and he told her parents that he would again rather wait until she got older before running her through the full gauntlet of tests the medical establishment would undoubtedly be eager to throw at her. Agnar and Iduna gratefully took his recommendation. They, too, were averse to seeing their daughter poked and prodded by so many strange hands.

The following year, Iduna became pregnant again, and in due time Kai delivered another healthy little girl.

Kai continued to see the Arensens at least once a year, and he watched Elsa grow into a cute platinum-haired toddler, then into a quiet girl with braids watching as Kai examined her little sister. Baby Anna soon grew freckles and red hair, but to Kai's simultaneous relief and disappointment, never exhibited anything unusual as her older sister did.

Elsa became colder and paler as she grew, and with every cold and flu that brought her to Kai's office, she sneezed bigger and bigger clouds of snow and ice. By the time she was 4 years old, Kai started wrapping Elsa's hands in a towel before giving her shots – the towel would be filled with snow afterwards, or after one particularly painful session, frozen solid.

Meanwhile, Anna inevitably caught the same colds as her sister – but sadly, she was affected in the normal fashion: her snot was just as sticky and disgusting as any other child's.

Elsa's body temperature dropped relentlessly, and by the time she was 10, her 85-degree body temperature felt positively chilly to anyone else who touched her forehead. Noticing how Elsa became more pale every year, Kai began testing Elsa's blood annually, checking for signs of anemia.

Then came puberty.

Elsa was 12 years old when she had her first period. By this age, she had learned to keep her "snow magic" (Kai could not object to this term, not knowing what else to call it) in check. Elsa winced when Kai poked the needle into her shoulder to give her the shots – but she managed to hold the snow inside, except for a few snowflakes that drifted from her clenched fists onto the floor. "Good job, Elsa!" her father praised her.

The stress of adolescence and secondary school clearly took its toll on Elsa in the next few years. Elsa soon began wearing gloves to school every day, so as to avoid accidentally leaking snow from her hands.

Things got better in time, and Elsa, having always been unusually mature for her age, seemed to grow out of the teenage drama years faster than any of her classmates. Of course, it probably helped that Anna was now also going to the secondary school, as her presence had always seemed to help Elsa calm down.

Kai saw Elsa again when she was 15 – old enough to have her own questions about her health. Having had a regular period for many months now, Elsa wondered why the color was so light. Wasn't blood supposed to be red? Elsa had brought in her last menstrual pad to show Kai that her periods were staining very light pink.

"I see," said Kai, "sure, let's have a look." No sooner had Kai spoken, then an old menstrual pad with a dried baby-pink spot in the middle was thrust up into his face by a grinning 12-year-old Anna, standing at her sister's feet in front of the examination table. Kai momentarily flinched, to both girls' laughter, but gamely examined the pad and indeed saw that the color of Elsa's blood was quite light.

Elsa was feeling fine and had no other complaints, but Kai noticed she was even colder than before and her fingertips were becoming ever-so-slightly crunchy – an unfamiliar sensation he had never felt in his 40 years of practicing medicine. Elsa had been gradually more anemic over the past few years, but now it was starting to raise Kai's concern. A quick blood test showed that Elsa's hemoglobin levels were lower than before. Kai called the Arensens that evening to inform them of the results and prescribed an iron supplement for Elsa to help increase her hemoglobin levels.

One week later, Elsa was back in Kai's office. As always, Anna accompanied her.

"Hello, Elsa. What brings you in today? …hi, Anna. Nice to see you too."

"I'm constipated!"

"Okay, tell me more about that."

Kai listened sympathetically while Elsa told him about her pain and straining while defecating.

"That's not all," Anna piped in, "yesterday she finally pooped, and she pooped out a big turd of ice!"

Kai thought that was strange, but no more strange than having snow burst out of one's hands. And he'd had 15 years to get used to Elsa's uniqueness among his patients, so aside from a tiny raise of his eyebrows, Kai's professional demeanor remained unbroken. "I see," he said, "can you describe it a little more?"

Anna excitedly showed Kai a picture on her cellphone, evidently of Elsa's recent bowel movement. The toilet bowl was clear, except for a thick rod of clear-to-white ice floating right in the middle. It looked nothing like feces at all. Kai looked at the two girls skeptically.

"You're not having me on, now, are you?"

"That's what it looked like," Elsa confirmed.

"Okay…" Kai said slowly, "anything else out of the ordinary for you recently?"

"Well, no, not really."

Kai knew that constipation was a typical side effect of iron supplements. Though he wondered how much of his medical knowledge really applied to Elsa, he had little else to go on. He suggested trying some fiber supplements. Elsa phoned him the following week to let him know that it had helped somewhat.

However, three months later, Elsa's blood tests showed that the iron supplements hadn't worked at all. Her blood counts were even lower than they had been before. She was low on not only her hemoglobin, but also her white cells and platelets. In addition, she had another problem now: her skin was becoming so cold that other people were starting to notice.

Elsa had been wearing gloves to school for years now, to avoid shooting snow from her fingers by accident, but before, she could always take them off at home. But now, she was wearing the gloves even at home because her hands had become so freezing cold that she couldn't hug Anna or her parents anymore. She also began to wear dark stockings, as her knee-length boots were no longer high enough to conceal the gleaming whiteness of her legs, as the snow portion now ran almost up to her hips.

With these unexplained changes on top of Elsa's abnormal blood test results, Kai felt that it was time for her to see the Hematologist at the regional hospital. Her case had now passed beyond the limits of his medical knowledge and experience, and he was as baffled as anyone else. However, Elsa was reluctant to go to the specialists, as it would mean even more people finding out about her anomalous body temperature and thinking she was a freak. In the end, Kai relented, but he made Elsa promise that if she became sick or feverish in any way she would go straight to the hospital in an ambulance, and call him after arriving.

Miraculously, Elsa never did get sick, even though everyone else at school was getting the usual colds and flus. When Anna came in with a bad cold the following month, Kai wrote her a note to miss school, while wondering if Elsa's nearly-nonexistent immune system would be enough to protect her from the virus. But it fortunately appeared that Elsa's cold temperature was a more-than-adequate substitute for a normal teenager's immune cells. She made it through that winter without any illness.

But Elsa had a bigger problem than mere colds. Over the next few months, to her consternation (and Anna's constant fascination), more of her skin became transformed; her stomach and chest became snow-textured, and she wore long sleeves and long pants even in the dog days of summer. These quickly soaked through with what Elsa's classmates assumed was sweat, but was in reality condensation from the air – as long as they didn't get close enough to feel the cold emanating from her, they wouldn't know the difference. Only her still-normal face and neck could be revealed to the rest of the world.

By the end of the summer, Elsa had gotten her driver's license and was looking forward to her last year of high school. All seemed well, so Kai sent her to get her annual blood test.

"Kai! Come quick!" It was Gerda calling out from the next room. Gerda was Kai's long-time nurse, and she always drew the blood samples for every patient who needed tests done.

Kai excused himself and went over. Elsa was sitting in the chair, looking a little surprised and unsettled. Gerda on the other hand was hyperventilating and anxiously showing Kai the sample of Elsa's blood. "Look!"

Kai saw immediately what was wrong with Elsa's blood. Instead of its usual bright red color, it was pink and watery, strongly resembling pink lemonade. Kai immediately recalled the light-colored menstrual periods Elsa had mentioned to him a year prior.

"Elsa, are you feeling alright?" Kai asked with concern, as he took one of Elsa's cold wrists between his fingers and felt for her pulse.

According to the medical science Kai had practiced for over 40 years, the situation before his eyes was impossible. If Elsa's red blood cells were so depleted that her blood didn't even look red anymore, it was a miracle that she was even alive. Kai expected her pulse to be racing, her heart struggling to circulate enough oxygen to her organs.

But Elsa felt completely fine and her pulse was strong and entirely normal. "I feel fine, but what happened to my blood?" she asked. Kai had no answer.

He told Gerda to simply run the tests as if nothing was wrong. The results came back two days later, confirming what Kai's veteran clinical intuition told him. Elsa's blood counts had dropped so low that they were below the point at which any normal person should be able to breathe or remain conscious. Her blood was so thin it was almost water – she had less than one percent of the normal number of cells circulating in her body.

Kai informed Elsa and her family, and strongly recommended they see some specialists. This time Elsa agreed, and two weeks later, the Arensens piled into their small sedan for a day trip to Corona Hospital. Kai had called ahead to inform the hospital so that they would not be surprised by their new patient's coldness and pale temperature.

At the hospital, Elsa went through the wringer of no less than six specialist doctors. She answered the same questions over and over, and donated several vials of her unique blood for testing. She got a full-body scan, blew into measuring devices, peed into a cup, had sticky electrodes stuck all over her skin, and had tubes stuck down her throat and up her intestines. (To look for bleeding, the gastroenterology doctors had explained. The pulmonologist wanted to stick a tube into Elsa's lungs to look around, but when he admitted it wasn't strictly medically necessary, Elsa refused; he took the disappointment in stride.) Fortunately, Elsa managed to contain her nervousness (and her snowflakes) with the help of Anna holding her hand throughout the day.

One week later, on a quiet Friday afternoon, Gerda handed Kai the office phone. "Dr. Weselton's on the phone for you," she said.

Konrad Weselton, MD, had gone to medical school with Kai more than forty years ago, and they had been close friends ever since. While Kai was starting his family practice in Arendelle, Konrad joined the attending physician staff at Corona Hospital and rose up the ranks.

Kai quickly opened Elsa's chart on his computer before putting the phone to his ear. "Hey, Konrad."

"Good afternoon, Kai."

"Something tells me this isn't a social call."

"It is not. So, about this girl you wanted me to run some tests on. Who the hell is she and where the hell did you find her!?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me, Konrad."

"This better not be a prank, Kai."

"It isn't. I delivered this girl with my own hands and she's been my patient for all 16 of her years on this earth. So what happened with the tests?"

"Well, let's see. She's got a hemoglobin of 0.2 and a glucose level of zero and on endoscopy the inside of her stomach is white and five different biopsy samples all showed absolutely nothing. I personally watched our lab technicians re-calibrate every instrument and re-run every single test and the problem isn't our lab. What the hell is this girl made of?"

"White, huh?" Kai thought about the snow Elsa had formerly sneezed back when she still had colds, and wondered if the snow was somehow coming from somewhere inside. He had long since gotten used to Elsa's ice-cold, crunchy handshake (now realizing with a start that it felt exactly as if her hand was made of snow).

Suddenly, Kai had solved the mystery – at least part of it. How much would he tell his friend?

"Konrad, can you keep a secret?"

"Let me guess, you're about to tell me something that deserves to be published in the New England Journal."

"Frankly, yes… but this can't go past us, or we'll all have bought ourselves a lot of trouble, you understand?"

"Okay."

"It's snow. That's what she's made of."

"What!?"

"All her insides magically turn into snow. She releases it from her hands."

"Uh… what?"

Kai did not leave the office until well after dark that evening.

The following week Kai had Elsa and her family in his office to tell them the results.

"So what does this all mean?" Elsa's father asked, with evident concern.

"That's the big question," Kai acknowledged. "I wish I could tell you, but I honestly don't know. There's never been a case like Elsa's in all our medical literature. She is one of a kind."

Elsa sat through most of the appointment looking increasingly preoccupied while her parents and sister asked their inquiries. After answering all of them, Kai turned to Elsa, inviting her to share her worry.

"Dr. Lindquist," she said, "if I'm turning into snow from my extremities inward, and the snow is creeping up my body, what happens when it gets up to my head?"

Elsa graduated as valedictorian from Arendelle High School and gave her graduation speech wearing a turtleneck under her graduation robes, along with her now-trademark rubber gloves. Much to her relief, the snow part of her hadn't climbed higher than her neck by then – though she would have to deal with the issue before heading off to Corona State University that fall.

At first Elsa hoped vainly that her transformation might stop, that her head might remain human while planted atop her snow-woman neck and body. But when the paleness climbed up her face and gleamed through the heaviest layers of makeup and concealer, Elsa had to switch to hoping that her transformation would be complete by the time she started college, to not leave a visible contrast between her still-slightly-pink forehead and her bright-white lower face and ears. Her hair, miraculously, changed little, other than becoming a little whiter.

"I look like an old lady," Elsa complained, looking at her head of pure white hair in the mirror. "Maybe I should dye it?"

"No, don't!" Anna said. "It compliments the rest of you perfectly. Don't change a thing!"

"Of course you would say that," Elsa grumbled.

"Of course I would, because I'm right!"

All too soon the summer was over, and Elsa loaded up the family's old sedan, her graduation gift as her parents now used their new hybrid car. Elsa had become more snow-woman than human, though her parents took every opportunity to remind her that she was still their little girl regardless of how she looked. "We don't care if your face is made of snow," Adgar once said while embracing his daughter, "you'll still be our Elsa," though the moment was somewhat ruined when he leaned down to kiss Elsa on the cheek only to get his lips stuck on her freezing face – Elsa had to invoke her powers to free him by thawing the outermost surface of her porcelain-like ice skin.

Anna then gave Elsa one last hug, but snaked her arms under Elsa's shirt from behind to touch her bare back, getting herself stuck in position on purpose. "I'm not letting you go!" she whined, jokingly. Elsa laughed and unfroze Anna's arms from her back, shaking them off.

Against all odds, Elsa made it through a whole semester, keeping to herself, avoiding contact with her classmates, and throwing herself into her schoolwork. No one bothered her, anyway – those who noticed her gave her strange looks, noticing the unnatural glow of her cheeks and the whiteness of her eyes, the cold chill that seemed to hover around her, and the drops of water she always left behind on her seat in the back corner of the lecture hall. Other students wisely kept a safe distance from the albino girl who was always sweating buckets and seemed to suck up all the heat within a several-foot radius.

Thus, it was not until Elsa returned home for the winter holidays that her lifelong secret was finally exposed.

It was on the road home, just outside of Arendelle, the evening after finishing her fall semester finals. The roads were icy and mounds of snow lined either side of the road, but Elsa instinctively knew where to swerve to avoid the ice patches. With her now-rarely-used powers she reached out to the snow on either side as it flew past her at 50 miles per hour, letting the cool feeling wash through her.

The light turned green, and Elsa made her turn – then suddenly there was a screech of tires, a crash, her car door buckled inwards – she turned, startled, to see the truck whose driver had not seen her in time. Instinctively she raised her hands to block the impact but it was too late – everything warped around her, the eighteen-wheeler plowed forward relentlessly, and a sharp pain blossomed up in her legs and side as her shrinking car, crushed by the oncoming truck, squeezed her body in her seat.

Somewhere in the chaotic sounds of screeching tires and shattering glass and metal crashing against metal, there was an unmistakable sound of ice crackling and buckling, and Elsa screamed voicelessly in the terrifying realization that the ice was in fact her own bones breaking from the impact.

The creaking of metal and rubber gradually diminished and ground to a halt. Pinned sideways, only able to move her head, Elsa glanced down at herself. Her whole left side felt like it was on fire, and the excruciating pain shot through her ribcage every time she took a breath. Her left forearm was bent at a sharp angle in the middle, her hand still holding the steering wheel, though she could not feel it. A small sharp fragment of clear ice was sticking ever-so-slightly out from the inside surface of her arm and water dripped from the wound onto her pants, making a spot on her thigh. Elsa realized the jagged ice must be her bone and the water must be her blood. She wondered how the paramedics would react when they found her.

Realizing the implications of that thought, as the distant sound of sirens broke through her haze of pain, Elsa steeled herself for the inevitable discovery. The world was about to discover her secret, and there was nothing she could do about it.

…or was there?

Elsa reached into her mind, calling up her power over all frozen things. If her hand was snow and ice, shouldn't it bend to her will, like the snow blanketing the fields outside? She focused on the fingers of her left hand, letting her magic feel each finger in space, then moved each finger off the steering wheel. Her hand seemed to float as she suspended it with her power. Carefully maneuvering her broken arm around the edge of the steering wheel, she brought it to the narrow space in front of her, cradling it with her still-usable right arm. She looked closely at the injured part of her left arm, focusing on the edges of the broken bone with her power. An answering twinge of pain ran like a shock down her left arm to her spine. She could see in her mind's eye the mismatched edges of her two broken bones. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and forced them back into place with her powers. The pain in her arm flared up again and the world spun around her as she almost passed out from the intensity. Fortunately, a loud knock on the car door grabbed her attention. She looked down, craning her head, to see a firefighter looking in through her shattered window.

"Ma'am!" the firefighter addressed her loudly. "Are you alright? Can you move?"

"I'm fine," Elsa said, mostly to buy herself some time before anyone reached over to touch her. Experimentally, Elsa tried rising a little out of her seat. She was pinned. She looked back to the rescuer and shook her head.

"That's alright," the firefighter reassured her warmly, projecting confidence as he was trained to. "We'll get you out of there very soon!" Behind him, another firefighter was bringing over one of those big cutting tools she had once heard of, the "Jaws of Life".

As the firefighters worked to free Elsa from the car, she focused her attention on her injured arm once again, finding the ends of her fractured bones which she had earlier put back into the right place. Visualizing the small gaps between the jagged ends of bone, she conjured her best clear ice in the cracks, filling them in as if with glue.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" One of the firefighters asked with evident concern, startling Elsa. "Huh? Yes, I'm okay!" she replied quickly, now realizing that having closed her eyes while focusing on trying to fix her own bones, she must have looked like she was drifting into unconsciousness.

"Where are you injured? Did you hit your head?"

"I'm okay. I'm just stuck."

"You've lost a lot of blood, ma'am. Try to stay awake for me, okay?"

Elsa realized that the large wet patch on her dark pants must have looked like blood to the rescuers. "Oh, um, that's just water," she said. "I, uh, my drink spilled on me when I got hit." She was telling the truth, technically – the firefighters didn't need to know the *whole* truth.

But Elsa realized as she told her half-truth that she was, indeed, feeling a little bit lightheaded and tired. She hoped the blood loss wasn't getting to her. But she found herself fighting to stay awake as the firefighters worked to pry the window of her damaged car door wide open enough to pull her out. When they reached in to grab her by the arms to pull her out, she was drained enough that she forgot to resist. The firefighters momentarily froze as they touched her arms.

"Are you okay, ma'am? You're freezing cold!"

Panic helped restore Elsa's waning alertness. "I'm fine. This is how I normally am. My doctors say I'm cold whenever I go." So does everyone else, she thought.

The firefighters shrugged and returned to the task. Between the two of them, one holding her arms, the other supporting her under her stomach and then her legs as they lifted her over the edge of the car door, they carried Elsa face-down right onto a stretcher waiting a few feet away that she hadn't even noticed. The firefighters, and two waiting paramedics, turned Elsa onto her back and wheeled her into a waiting ambulance.

Elsa didn't remember much of the ambulance ride. She realized later that she must have given the paramedics her name and emergency contact information, as when she woke up at the hospital later, her parents were standing at the foot of her bed, and a mitted hand was holding her own. Elsa knew without looking that it was Anna's hand, but she turned and smiled tiredly. Anna beamed back.

"The doctor wants to talk to you," Elsa heard her father's voice from beyond her feet. She looked up, and there was a diminuitive round-headed old man with a mustache and glasses, wearing a white coat that went down to his ankles. Within a moment, she recognized him. It was Dr. Weselton, the lung doctor she had met previously when she was undergoing her testing.

"Miss Arensen," he greeted her, offering his hand. Elsa didn't move, so he reached down and shook her hand for a moment. "My, you are colder than you were last year! Anyway, I am very glad to see you again, though I wish it were under better circumstances. As I'm sure you remember, I'm Dr. Weselton – I'm a good friend of your regular doctor, Dr. Lindquist. I've spoken with your parents already and we believe you might have some internal injuries from the accident, and we're getting ready to take you to surgery. Dr. Schrader is a great surgeon, and he'll be here to see you in a little bit. Just sit back and relax, okay? We shall take very good care of you." Dr. Weselton swept out of the room, his coat billowing behind him.

 _author's note:_

 _I first attempted to write my own "Elsa's body made of snow" headcanon over 4 years ago. After sitting on this story for 4 years with writer's block, and falling away from the fandom in the meantime, I've decided to release it un-edited in case anyone else wants to pick it up and run with it._

 _This work is abandoned and up for adoption - many apologies to my Frozen/Elsanna readers._


End file.
